GhostofAnakin

One additional issue I have with combat is my companion doesn't seem to a]start attacking the enemy until I actually strike him, even if the enemy is charging right at me, and b]even the companions who have good long-range weapons seem to want to engage in melee combat. Caja will shoot fireballs once in a while, but seems to engage in sword play more often than not.

You can still do all the basic quests for other factions. Joining a faction locks you out of doing higher tier quests for other faction (i.e. the quests you would get only after joining said faction) but it doesn't lock you out of doing basic quests that you can do without joining. Once you figure out which faction you want to join just go for it. So they other settlements won't become hostile toward me if I join a faction? It won't turn into the "kill on sight" thing where if I join the Clerics, every Outlaw in the city will attack me? Nah. You'll get the occasional "Oh, you joined Faction X. That's a... choice, I guess." from a member of Faction Y or Faction Z but you can still come into their town and do business and stuff. There may be an odd character here and there that will refuse to do business with you because you chose Not Their Faction, but nothing major. I'm a Crazed Cultist and I go into Tree Hugger Town and Junkieville all the time. Good to know. Is there any benefit to waiting to join a faction? Or is it actually better, in terms of getting stronger as a character, to join ASAP when I've decided which I want to join?

You can still do all the basic quests for other factions. Joining a faction locks you out of doing higher tier quests for other faction (i.e. the quests you would get only after joining said faction) but it doesn't lock you out of doing basic quests that you can do without joining. Once you figure out which faction you want to join just go for it. So they other settlements won't become hostile toward me if I join a faction? It won't turn into the "kill on sight" thing where if I join the Clerics, every Outlaw in the city will attack me?

So without spoilers for Elex, if I choose to join a faction, does that mean I can no longer do any of the currently open quests I had for the factions I didn't join? Or do I get a "quest failed" multiple times for quests given to me by the factions I didn't join?

Yeah, most of the quests there lead to you supporting a side. Like helping a bunch of Outlaws clearly barred from the city gain entry to it. It'll make more sense once you see what the quests lead up to. I mean, yeah, I can see the *why* of why it would be considered taking sides in the conflict after the fact. But prior, I literally just wanted to enter the city and was trying to keep my end of the bargain. Prior to that, there wasn't really much dialogue about making a choice like that meaning I was siding with one over the other.

So ... save scumming comes to the rescue. I got into the Domed City in Elex, but had to get those fake IDs made by the Outlaw dude in return for delivering a fake ID to his guy caught in the city. Thankfully I saved prior to entering the city because when I handed the guy his fake ID, I got a "you've taken a side in the Abessa conflict". I was like, wait, what?! I gave a guy a fake ID, I didn't publicly proclaim myself siding with one faction!

Okay, I'm kind of stuck at the moment in Elex because all my quests I currently have available require me to be able to take on or infiltrate bases with enemies who will attack me on sight, but I can't attempt any of them because I'm not strong enough. But I can't get stronger because all the quests to gain XP are too difficult right now. It's like a Catch-22 and I really don't know what to do. I'll never level up just wandering around killing 5XP or 10XP weak animals.

That's a consequence of the 'flat' damage reduction system. If you're using a near starter tier weapon that does 20 damage a young wolf might have say 5 damage reduction, so most of the damage gets through and you might kill it in 5 or 6 hits depending on combos etc. An adult wolf might have 20 damage reduction though, so you get almost no damage damage even with any combo bonuses. That makes the young wolf manageable but the adult one disproportionately more difficult. But, as a consequence when you get to a low intermediate weapon that does 30 damage suddenly you're a lot more able to handle that adult wolf because your effective damage dealt increases ten fold- instead of doing 1 or 2 damage per hit you start doing around 10 per hit. However your effective damage against a young wolf doesn't even double so you still need 4ish hits to kill one so if you mess around with them too much they're still potentially dangerous; but instead of needing seemingly hundreds of hits to kill an adult wolf you 'only' need about ten. It's a pretty good system for keeping things interesting in a long game since only the weakest enemies become absolute walkovers, but it's certainly a hard start because you have to get over that initial hurdle of only being able to handle the weak versions of a few enemies until you develop a bit. As is tradition for Piranha Bytes games if you're really good or really patient you can kill just about anything with starter tier weapons, but it will take a very long time. (n.b. numbers are illustrative only, I don't know the real numbers involved) That's the other issue. I'm still using my first tier weapons because it takes ages to level up the abilities needed to use higher tier weapons. I've got a couple of weapons in my inventory that do quite a lot of damage, but at the rate I'm going leveling up it won't be for ages until I can actually use them. It might seem like I'm hating it, but I'm not. I'm enjoying the hell out of the game, in general. It's just the combat where I find I'm either spending my entire time running away or dying after getting 2-hit killed by a mouse.

Do I EVER get strong? I feel like I keep leveling up, but I still get curb stomped by anything that isn't like a runt. I've met the major players for the Berserkers and the Outlaws so far, and I'm up to around Level 7 or 8. And I still get killed in fights if the enemy gets like more than 2 shots in on me. Meanwhile, I hack and hack for days and the enemy will lose maybe a quarter of their health bar. AND I'M PLAYING ON EASY!

Yeah, Jax is a pathetic weakling at first. Try to avoid most combat and complete a bunch of easy quests as that will level you up the quickest. You will really start to get stronger once you join a faction. My problem is most of the quests require some sort of combat interaction. Also, I was trying to avoid joining a faction until I'd had a chance to interact with all of them first to see which one I like. Problem is I literally can't reach any of the factions other than the Berserkers because I get killed so easily traveling the roads.

You were right about combat in Elex early on being difficult. Literally everyone I meet is kicking my ass except for the absolute easiest of creatures.

I have it installed but have not yet played it, I really need to, I've just been hooked on RDR2, as soon as I'm done with it, the plan is to play the dlc and the new "New Game+" mode on ultimate spidermam difficulty. I was going to play NG+ first, but the DLC supposedly takes place after the events of the main story. So instead of playing through an entire game of NG+ first (which would take a couple of weeks for me), I just played the DLC after my original game was done.

Just finished The Heist DLC for Spider-Man. It was ... okay. The side content was kind of meh. And the main story ended on a "to be continued...". In terms of new enemies, the new "brutes" with the big gatling guns are annoying because the dodge doesn't seem to work for me. Even if I dodge the first shot, I always seem to get hit by the next. Only way to avoid them is to hide behind objects, but none of my gadgets seem to do much to stun them long enough for me to attack them.

Since Amazon is being weird about Elex, I decided to go back to play some Spider-Man now that the first DLC is out. I was tempted to play the Batman DLC, but most of them seem to suck. I recall Arkham City having better DLC, but maybe that's nostalgia talking.

Which was the pirate one? I enjoyed that one.

I decided to pick that game up off Amazon because it's pretty cheap now. When I went place my order it was listed as "in stock", but after I'd submitted my order it's now telling me that I'll receive an e-mail when the item becomes available. What?

I was finally able to get the 100% complete ending for Batman Arkham Knight. If I attempt to play the NG+, will I have to do all the Riddler trophies again? Or just do the "quest" portions of that rather than the trophy hunting?

I actually finished off the Riddler challenge. Despite many curse words, oaths that I'm done with the game and the developers who made it, I pushed on through sheer stubbornness and managed to somehow get all the trophies that previously eluded me. Some were pure luck (blind attempts at R1'ing my way to the ledge where the trophy was before the time running out and somehow doing it), but now that I've got them all I can finally put this game aside. I swear, my completionist side always wins out over my side that has a low tolerance for annoying levels in games.

I had way less trouble with Spiderman. I think it's those stupid timed Riddler trophies. I hate, hate, hate them. Did I mention I hate them? I have like 9 left to finish all 243 Riddler challenges.

So pissed that they tied the "real" ending to Arkham Knight to having 100% completion when it comes to the Most Wanted. I gave up trying to get all the Riddler trophies because some of them were just so tedious to do they weren't even fun. And wouldn't you know it, the most annoying ones were the ones associated with the Batmobile. Now that I'm done, I think I can say with certainty Arkham Knight was my least favorite of the Arkham titles. A big part of that was the inclusion of the Batmobile and how so many tasks/missions required its use. I hope if they do another Batman game (or any game involving Batman) that the Batmobile doesn't play such a huge role in the next one. I don't mind if there's one or two missions of it, but it felt like half the content required it.

I just don't get the design decision behind some of these Riddler trophies/challenges. I get the ones that make you think and properly use the gadgets you've acquired. Those are pretty cool. But the timing ones where you have to hit multiple targets with the batarang within X amount of seconds or you screw up and your margin for error is half a second? Those aren't fun, they're just annoying.

As I recall, If you don't do everything, you don't get to fight him. And if you don't fight him, you can't turn him in which means you can't get 100% on all baddies. This in turn locks you out of the best/true ending. Brilliant, don't you think? Just watch it on YT when you are done because it's not worth the aggravation. That's annoying when they do that. Optional stuff, especially stuff like the Riddler trophies, shouldn't have any major impact on the main story. Either that, or don't make the trophies annoying to get all of them. I'm actually about 30 trophies/riddles away, but the ones I'm away are the ones that are time-related and/or those stupid sonic ones where you track the hidden symbols with the car, but then you have to get out of the car to advance, and get back in before the stupid sonic cuts out. Then there's the ones inside the blimp, where it's so difficult to traverse because the map shows one level even though there's multiple levels you have to go through, so I can never tell which level a trophy is at even if I see its location on my map.

I finished the Riddler stuff up to the Catwoman conclusion, but there's no way I'm finishing off all his trophies/riddles. Way too tedious and hard to get to. I like the gadget related ones, but get annoyed by the timed ones.

I FINALLY FINISHED THAT LAST STUPID RIDDLER RACE! Oh. My. God. Most annoying part of the game, by far.

I had a suspicion that's who the Arkham Knight was going to be.